Calligraphy, or beautiful writing, has the qualities of abstract line at the same time that it signifies words. Calligraphy is the most privileged form of decoration in Islamic art. Art historian Oleg Grabar writes of ornament in The Mediation of Ornament – those signs that seem to mean nothing in themselves – that it has a performative function in marking the entry to a different space, for example the ritual space of the mosque. Grabar writes that in Islam, life is considered impermanent and appearances cannot be trusted; hence what holds the community together is language, spoken or written, as it is the intermediary of prayer. Thus Islamic calligraphy can be considered the visible, living line of a community of faith—the vector that holds the community in a relation with God.
It is not a surprise to find one of the most compelling descriptions of the performativity of the vector halfway between iconophilic Europe and the aniconic Islamic world, in Byzantine art. The Emperor Constantine V (reign 741-75) denounced images as impious because they are composed of lines, and hence finite: “If the icon draws the figure of the divine, it encloses the infinite within its line, which is impossible.” [see Marie-Josée Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy: The Byzantine Origins of the Contemporary Imaginary]
Constantine’s astonishing decree might justify Islamic aniconism, for Islamic disapproval of making figural representations of divine beings also expresses a kind of artist’s modesty in the face of the infinite. But, as Marie-Josée Mondzain writes in her magisterial study of the Byzantine icon, Eastern Christian religious icons were defended against Constantine’s iconoclasm insofar as they were not discrete images (thus subject to idolatry) but vectors that derive their meaning from the directionality of divine intention, performed by the worshipping viewer. The icon was saved by those who could argue that it is empty in itself, that it derives its meaning from the directionality of divine intention, performed by the worshipping viewer – in other words, the icon is not an image, but a vector. The icon, Mondzain writes, “made in the image of [the ‘natural image’ of Christ, will no longer be expressive, signifying, or referential. It will not be inscribed within the space of a gap, but will incarnate withdrawal itself.” By this description, the religious icon is not an image in itself but a compulsion that draws the worshipper to gaze into its absence, thereby enjoining the presence of God. It pulls the worshipper’s gaze beyond it, toward the divine.
J. R. Carpenter’s note: In Tibetan Buddhism a calligraphic representation of the holy word Om can be used as a focal point for meditation. In Judaism, Hebrew calligraphy as an art form blends script into prayer. In A. M. Klein’s poem Heirloom the script most certainly “pulls the worshipper’s gaze beyond it, toward the divine”:
Beautiful, though no pictures on them save
The Scorpion crawling on a printed track;
The virgin floating on a scriptural wave,
Square letters twinkling in the Zodiac.
Calligraphy and other kinds of abstract Islamic ornament also have this vector-like quality that pulls the worshipper toward the divine as though toward a magnet. Writing the Qur’an is a form of prayer, as it is repeating in time the words spoken by God. The calligrapher, writes contemporary calligrapher Abdel Ghani Alani in L’Écriture de l’écriture: Traité de calligraphie arabo-musulmane, must be both present and absent, as though daydreaming; as though the “energy” that motivates the writing moves both from beyond the calligrapher and through him or her. This writing, Alani suggests, indexes the body of the calligrapher: “The letter takes the form and movement of the body that realizes it, such that what one writes becomes, as for the painter, a self-portrait.” The rhythm of writing, Alani writes, is informed by the calligrapher’s breath: in the drawing of a line, breath is suspended, “between life and death.” So the latent rhythm of calligraphy is accompanied by the movement and breath of the calligrapher, not only in him- or herself but in relation to the divine source. (Some Muslims consider Alani’s comments unorthodox or an inappropriate assertion of the self in the act of prayer.)
In calligraphy, is the line abstract? Is it not in the service of language and required to defer to language’s need to communicate? Deleuze and Guattari considered writing to be a disciplining of the line; I would say, it’s not only or not necessarily that. Insofar as writing embodies the breath of the writer, as Alani describes, it is not a fixed symbol but the trace of a performative act. In other words, Islamic art is performative in that its vector, though supposedly coming from the divine to the human, is nonetheless activated by the human receiver.
other islands in this text-fed stream
